章节正文
scar upon the golden glitter; then after an interval the
voice of the young Malay uplifted and long-drawn de-
clared the depth of the water in his own language.
"Tiga stengah," he cried after each splash and pause,
gathering the line busily for another cast. "Tiga
stengah," which means three fathom and a half. For
a mile or so from seaward there was a uniform depth
of water right up to the bar. "Half-three. Half-
three. Half-three,"--and his modulated cry, returned
leisurely and monotonous, like the repeated call of a
bird, seemed to float away in sunshine and disappear in
the spacious silence of the empty sea and of a lifeless
shore lying open, north and south, east and west, with-
out the stir of a single cloud-shadow or the whisper of
any other voice.
The owner-engineer of the Sofala remained very still
behind the two seamen of different race, creed, and
color; the European with the time-defying vigor of
his old frame, the little Malay, old, too, but slight and
shrunken like a withered brown leaf blown by a chance
wind under the mighty shadow of the other. Very
busy looking forward at the land, they had not a glance
to spare; and Massy, glaring at them from behind,
seemed to resent their attention to their duty like a per-
sonal slight upon himself.
This was unreasonable; but he had lived in his own
world of unreasonableresentments for many years. At
last, passing his moist palm over the rare lanky wisps
of coarse hair on the top of his yellow head, he began
to talk slowly.
"A leadsman, you want! I suppose that's your cor-
rect mail-boat style. Haven't you enough judgment
to tell where you are by looking at the land? Why,
before I had been a twelvemonth in the trade I was up
to that trick--and I am only an engineer. I can point
to you from here where the bar is, and I could tell you
besides that you are as likely as not to stick her in the
mud in about five minutes from now; only you would
call it interfering, I suppose. And there's that written
agreement of ours, that says I mustn't interfere."
His voice stopped. Captain Whalley, without relax-
ing the set severity of his features, moved his lips to ask
in a quick mumble--
"How near, Serang?"
"Very near now, Tuan," the Malay muttered rapidly.
"Dead slow," said the Captain aloud in a firm tone.
The Serang snatched at the handle of the telegraph.
A gong clanged down below. Massy with a scornful
snigger walked off and put his head down the engine-
room skylight.
"You may expect some rare fooling with the engines,
Jack," he bellowed. The space into which he stared was
deep and full of gloom; and the gray gleams of steel
down there seemed cool after the intense glare of the
sea around the ship. The air, however, came up clammy
and hot on his face. A short hoot on which it would
have been impossible to put any sort of interpretation
came from the bottom cavernously. This was the way
in which the second engineer answered his chief.
He was a middle-aged man with an inattentive man-
ner, and apparently wrapped up in such a taciturn con-
cern for his engines that he seemed to have lost the use
of speech. When addressed directly his only answer
would be a grunt or a hoot, according to the distance.
For all the years he had been in the Sofala he had never
been known to exchange as much as a frank Good-morn-
ing with any of his shipmates. He did not seem aware
that men came and went in the world; he did not seem
to see them at all. Indeed he never recognized his ship
mates on shore. At table (the four white men of the
Sofala messed together) he sat looking into his plate
dispassionately, but at the end of the meal would jump
up and bolt down below as if a sudden thought had im-
pelled him to rush and see whether somebody had not
stolen the engines while he dined. In port at the end of
the trip he went ashoreregularly, but no one knew
where he spent his evenings or in what manner. The
local coasting fleet had preserved a wild and incoherent
tale of his infatuation for the wife of a sergeant in an
Irish infantryregiment. The regiment, however, had
done its turn of garrison duty there ages before, and
was gone somewhere to the other side of the earth, out
of men's knowledge. Twice or perhaps three times in
the course of the year he would take too much to drink.
On these occasions he returned on board at an earlier
hour than usual; ran across the deck balancing himself
with his spread arms like a tight-rope walker; and
locking the door of his cabin, he would converse and
argue with himself the livelong night in an amazing
variety of tones; storm, sneer, and whine with an inex-
haustible persistence. Massy in his berth next door,
raising himself on his elbow, would discover that his
second had remembered the name of every white man
that had passed through the Sofala for years and years
back. He remembered the names of men that had died,
that had gone home, that had gone to America: he
remembered in his cups the names of men whose con-
nection with the ship had been so short that Massy had
almost forgotten its circumstances and could barely re-
call their faces. The inebriated voice on the other side
of the bulkhead commented upon them all with an ex-
traordinary and ingenious venom of scandalous inven-
tions. It seems they had all offended him in some way,
and in return he had found them all out. He muttered
darkly; he laughed sardonically; he crushed them one
after another; but of his chief, Massy, he babbled with
an envious and naive admiration. Clever scoundrel!
Don't meet the likes of him every day. Just look at
him. Ha! Great! Ship of his own. Wouldn't catch
HIM going wrong. No fear--the beast! And Massy,
after listening with a gratified smile to these artless
tributes to his greatness, would begin to shout, thump-
ing at the bulkhead with both fists--
"Shut up, you lunatic! Won't you let me go to
sleep, you fool!"
But a half smile of pride lingered on his lips; outside
the solitary lascar told off for night duty in harbor,
perhaps a youth fresh from a forest village, would stand
motionless in the shadows of the deck listening to the
endless drunken gabble. His heart would be thumping
with breathless" target="_blank" title="a.屏息的">breathless awe of white men: the arbitrary and
obstinate men who pursue inflexibly their incompre-
hensible purposes,--beings with weird intonations in the
voice, moved by unaccountable feelings, actuated by in-
scrutable motives.
VIII
For a while after his second's answering hoot Massy
hung over the engine-room gloomily. Captain Whal-
ley, who, by the power of five hundred pounds, had kept
his command for three years, might have been suspected
of never having seen that coast before. He seemed un-
able to put down his glasses, as though they had been
glued under his contracted eyebrows. This settled
frown gave to his face an air of invincible and just
severity; but his raised elbow trembled slightly, and
the perspiration poured from under his hat as if a
second sun had suddenly blazed up at the zenith by the
side of the ardent still globe already there, in whose
blinding white heat the earth whirled and shone like a
mote of dust.
From time to time, still holding up his glasses, he
raised his other hand to wipe his streaming face. The
drops rolled down his cheeks, fell like rain upon the
white hairs of his beard, and brusquely, as if guided
by an uncontrollable and anxiousimpulse, his arm
reached out to the stand of the engine-room telegraph.
The gong clanged down below. The balanced vibra-
tion of the dead-slow speed ceased together with every
sound and tremor in the ship, as if the great stillness
that reigned upon the coast had stolen in through her
sides of iron and taken possession of her innermost re-
cesses. The illusion of perfect immobility seemed to
fall upon her from the luminous blue dome without a
stain arching over a flat sea without a stir. The faint
breeze she had made for herself expired, as if all at
once the air had become too thick to budge; even the
slight hiss of the water on her stem died out. The nar-
row, long hull, carrying its way without a ripple,
seemed to approach the shoal water of the bar by
stealth. The plunge of the lead with the mournful,
mechanical cry of the lascar came at longer and longer
intervals; and the men on her bridge seemed to hold
their breath. The Malay at the helm looked fixedly
at the compass card, the Captain and the Serang stared
at the coast.
Massy had left the skylight, and, walking flat-footed,
had returned softly to the very spot on the bridge he
had occupied before. A slow, lingering grin exposed
his set of big white teeth: they gleamed evenly in the
shade of the awning like the keyboard of a piano in a
dusky room.
At last, pretending to talk to himself in excessive as-
tonishment, he said not very loud--
"Stop the engines now. What next, I wonder?"
He waited, stooping from the shoulders, his head
bowed, his glance oblique. Then raising his voice a
shade--
"If I dared make an absurd remark I would say that
you haven't the stomach to . . ."
But a yelling spirit of excitement, like some frantic
soul wandering unsuspected in the vast stillness of the
coast, had seized upon the body of the lascar at the lead.
The languidmonotony of his sing-song changed to a
swift, sharp clamor. The weight flew after a single
whir, the line whistled, splash followed splash in haste.
The water had shoaled, and the man, instead of the
drowsy tale of fathoms, was calling out the soundings
in feet.
"Fifteen feet. Fifteen, fifteen! Fourteen, four-
teen . . ."
Captain Whalley lowered the arm holding the glasses.
It descended slowly as if by its own weight; no other
part of his towering body stirred; and the swift cries
with their eager warning note passed him by as though
he had been deaf.
Massy, very still, and turning an attentive ear, had
fastened his eyes upon the silvery, close-cropped back
of the steady old head. The ship herself seemed to be
arrested but for the gradualdecrease of depth under
her keel.
"Thirteen feet . . . Thirteen! Twelve!" cried the
voice of the young Malay uplifted and long-drawn de-
clared the depth of the water in his own language.
"Tiga stengah," he cried after each splash and pause,
gathering the line busily for another cast. "Tiga
stengah," which means three fathom and a half. For
a mile or so from seaward there was a uniform depth
of water right up to the bar. "Half-three. Half-
three. Half-three,"--and his modulated cry, returned
leisurely and monotonous, like the repeated call of a
bird, seemed to float away in sunshine and disappear in
the spacious silence of the empty sea and of a lifeless
shore lying open, north and south, east and west, with-
out the stir of a single cloud-shadow or the whisper of
any other voice.
The owner-engineer of the Sofala remained very still
behind the two seamen of different race, creed, and
color; the European with the time-defying vigor of
his old frame, the little Malay, old, too, but slight and
shrunken like a withered brown leaf blown by a chance
wind under the mighty shadow of the other. Very
busy looking forward at the land, they had not a glance
to spare; and Massy, glaring at them from behind,
seemed to resent their attention to their duty like a per-
sonal slight upon himself.
This was unreasonable; but he had lived in his own
world of unreasonableresentments for many years. At
last, passing his moist palm over the rare lanky wisps
of coarse hair on the top of his yellow head, he began
to talk slowly.
"A leadsman, you want! I suppose that's your cor-
rect mail-boat style. Haven't you enough judgment
to tell where you are by looking at the land? Why,
before I had been a twelvemonth in the trade I was up
to that trick--and I am only an engineer. I can point
to you from here where the bar is, and I could tell you
besides that you are as likely as not to stick her in the
mud in about five minutes from now; only you would
call it interfering, I suppose. And there's that written
agreement of ours, that says I mustn't interfere."
His voice stopped. Captain Whalley, without relax-
ing the set severity of his features, moved his lips to ask
in a quick mumble--
"How near, Serang?"
"Very near now, Tuan," the Malay muttered rapidly.
"Dead slow," said the Captain aloud in a firm tone.
The Serang snatched at the handle of the telegraph.
A gong clanged down below. Massy with a scornful
snigger walked off and put his head down the engine-
room skylight.
"You may expect some rare fooling with the engines,
Jack," he bellowed. The space into which he stared was
deep and full of gloom; and the gray gleams of steel
down there seemed cool after the intense glare of the
sea around the ship. The air, however, came up clammy
and hot on his face. A short hoot on which it would
have been impossible to put any sort of interpretation
came from the bottom cavernously. This was the way
in which the second engineer answered his chief.
He was a middle-aged man with an inattentive man-
ner, and apparently wrapped up in such a taciturn con-
cern for his engines that he seemed to have lost the use
of speech. When addressed directly his only answer
would be a grunt or a hoot, according to the distance.
For all the years he had been in the Sofala he had never
been known to exchange as much as a frank Good-morn-
ing with any of his shipmates. He did not seem aware
that men came and went in the world; he did not seem
to see them at all. Indeed he never recognized his ship
mates on shore. At table (the four white men of the
Sofala messed together) he sat looking into his plate
dispassionately, but at the end of the meal would jump
up and bolt down below as if a sudden thought had im-
pelled him to rush and see whether somebody had not
stolen the engines while he dined. In port at the end of
the trip he went ashoreregularly, but no one knew
where he spent his evenings or in what manner. The
local coasting fleet had preserved a wild and incoherent
tale of his infatuation for the wife of a sergeant in an
Irish infantryregiment. The regiment, however, had
done its turn of garrison duty there ages before, and
was gone somewhere to the other side of the earth, out
of men's knowledge. Twice or perhaps three times in
the course of the year he would take too much to drink.
On these occasions he returned on board at an earlier
hour than usual; ran across the deck balancing himself
with his spread arms like a tight-rope walker; and
locking the door of his cabin, he would converse and
argue with himself the livelong night in an amazing
variety of tones; storm, sneer, and whine with an inex-
haustible persistence. Massy in his berth next door,
raising himself on his elbow, would discover that his
second had remembered the name of every white man
that had passed through the Sofala for years and years
back. He remembered the names of men that had died,
that had gone home, that had gone to America: he
remembered in his cups the names of men whose con-
nection with the ship had been so short that Massy had
almost forgotten its circumstances and could barely re-
call their faces. The inebriated voice on the other side
of the bulkhead commented upon them all with an ex-
traordinary and ingenious venom of scandalous inven-
tions. It seems they had all offended him in some way,
and in return he had found them all out. He muttered
darkly; he laughed sardonically; he crushed them one
after another; but of his chief, Massy, he babbled with
an envious and naive admiration. Clever scoundrel!
Don't meet the likes of him every day. Just look at
him. Ha! Great! Ship of his own. Wouldn't catch
HIM going wrong. No fear--the beast! And Massy,
after listening with a gratified smile to these artless
tributes to his greatness, would begin to shout, thump-
ing at the bulkhead with both fists--
"Shut up, you lunatic! Won't you let me go to
sleep, you fool!"
But a half smile of pride lingered on his lips; outside
the solitary lascar told off for night duty in harbor,
perhaps a youth fresh from a forest village, would stand
motionless in the shadows of the deck listening to the
endless drunken gabble. His heart would be thumping
with breathless" target="_blank" title="a.屏息的">breathless awe of white men: the arbitrary and
obstinate men who pursue inflexibly their incompre-
hensible purposes,--beings with weird intonations in the
voice, moved by unaccountable feelings, actuated by in-
scrutable motives.
VIII
For a while after his second's answering hoot Massy
hung over the engine-room gloomily. Captain Whal-
ley, who, by the power of five hundred pounds, had kept
his command for three years, might have been suspected
of never having seen that coast before. He seemed un-
able to put down his glasses, as though they had been
glued under his contracted eyebrows. This settled
frown gave to his face an air of invincible and just
severity; but his raised elbow trembled slightly, and
the perspiration poured from under his hat as if a
second sun had suddenly blazed up at the zenith by the
side of the ardent still globe already there, in whose
blinding white heat the earth whirled and shone like a
mote of dust.
From time to time, still holding up his glasses, he
raised his other hand to wipe his streaming face. The
drops rolled down his cheeks, fell like rain upon the
white hairs of his beard, and brusquely, as if guided
by an uncontrollable and anxiousimpulse, his arm
reached out to the stand of the engine-room telegraph.
The gong clanged down below. The balanced vibra-
tion of the dead-slow speed ceased together with every
sound and tremor in the ship, as if the great stillness
that reigned upon the coast had stolen in through her
sides of iron and taken possession of her innermost re-
cesses. The illusion of perfect immobility seemed to
fall upon her from the luminous blue dome without a
stain arching over a flat sea without a stir. The faint
breeze she had made for herself expired, as if all at
once the air had become too thick to budge; even the
slight hiss of the water on her stem died out. The nar-
row, long hull, carrying its way without a ripple,
seemed to approach the shoal water of the bar by
stealth. The plunge of the lead with the mournful,
mechanical cry of the lascar came at longer and longer
intervals; and the men on her bridge seemed to hold
their breath. The Malay at the helm looked fixedly
at the compass card, the Captain and the Serang stared
at the coast.
Massy had left the skylight, and, walking flat-footed,
had returned softly to the very spot on the bridge he
had occupied before. A slow, lingering grin exposed
his set of big white teeth: they gleamed evenly in the
shade of the awning like the keyboard of a piano in a
dusky room.
At last, pretending to talk to himself in excessive as-
tonishment, he said not very loud--
"Stop the engines now. What next, I wonder?"
He waited, stooping from the shoulders, his head
bowed, his glance oblique. Then raising his voice a
shade--
"If I dared make an absurd remark I would say that
you haven't the stomach to . . ."
But a yelling spirit of excitement, like some frantic
soul wandering unsuspected in the vast stillness of the
coast, had seized upon the body of the lascar at the lead.
The languidmonotony of his sing-song changed to a
swift, sharp clamor. The weight flew after a single
whir, the line whistled, splash followed splash in haste.
The water had shoaled, and the man, instead of the
drowsy tale of fathoms, was calling out the soundings
in feet.
"Fifteen feet. Fifteen, fifteen! Fourteen, four-
teen . . ."
Captain Whalley lowered the arm holding the glasses.
It descended slowly as if by its own weight; no other
part of his towering body stirred; and the swift cries
with their eager warning note passed him by as though
he had been deaf.
Massy, very still, and turning an attentive ear, had
fastened his eyes upon the silvery, close-cropped back
of the steady old head. The ship herself seemed to be
arrested but for the gradualdecrease of depth under
her keel.
"Thirteen feet . . . Thirteen! Twelve!" cried the
- glitter [´glitə]
n.光辉 vi.闪烁，炫耀 (初中英语单词) - interval [´intəvəl] n.间隙；(工间)休息 (初中英语单词)
- splash [splæʃ] v.&n.溅水声；涉水而进 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- whisper [´wispə] v.耳语 n.低语；沙沙声 (初中英语单词)
- european [juərə´pi:ən] a.欧洲的 n.欧洲人 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- ashore [ə´ʃɔ:] ad.向岸上 (初中英语单词)
- regiment [´redʒimənt] n.团；一大群 (初中英语单词)
- barely [´beəli] ad.公开地；仅仅 (初中英语单词)
- admiration [,ædmə´reiʃən] n.赞赏，钦佩 (初中英语单词)
- drunken [´drʌŋkən] a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词)
- pursue [pə´sju:] v.追赶；追踪；从事 (初中英语单词)
- slightly [´slaitli] ad.轻微地；细长的 (初中英语单词)
- anxious [´æŋkʃəs] a.担忧的；渴望的 (初中英语单词)
- impulse [´impʌls] n.推动(力)；冲动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- stolen [´stəulən] steal 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- plunge [plʌndʒ] v.插进 n.投入；冲击 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- compass [´kʌmpəs] n.指南针；圆规 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- absurd [əb´sə:d] a.荒谬的，可笑的 (初中英语单词)
- stomach [´stʌmək] n.胃；胃口，食欲 (初中英语单词)
- excitement [ik´saitmənt] n.兴奋；骚动；煽动 (初中英语单词)
- attentive [ə´tentiv] a.注意的；殷勤的 (初中英语单词)
- decrease [di´kri:s, ´di:kri:s] v.&n.减少；减退 (初中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- spacious [´speiʃəs] a.广阔的，宽敞的 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- resent [ri´zent] vt.不满于；怨恨；忿恨 (高中英语单词)
- intense [in´tens] a.强烈的；紧张的 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- regularly [´regjuləli] ad.有规律地；经常地 (高中英语单词)
- sergeant [´sɑ:dʒənt] n.警官；军士 (高中英语单词)
- infantry [´infəntri] n.步兵(部队) (高中英语单词)
- garrison [´gærisən] n.警备队 vt.驻防 (高中英语单词)
- converse [´kɔnvə:s] n.交谈 a.相反的 (高中英语单词)
- ingenious [in´dʒi:niəs] a.富于创新的；巧妙的 (高中英语单词)
- greatness [´greitnis] n.巨大；高尚；卓越 (高中英语单词)
- solitary [´sɔlitəri] a.独居的；孤独的 (高中英语单词)
- breathless [´breθlis] a.屏息的 (高中英语单词)
- illusion [i´lu:ʒən] n.幻觉；幻影；错觉 (高中英语单词)
- excessive [ik´sesiv] a.过分的；极端的 (高中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- gradual [´grædʒuəl] a.逐渐的 (高中英语单词)
- busily [´bizili] ad.忙碌地 (英语四级单词)
- fathom [´fæðəm] n.英寻 vt.推测，揣摩 (英语四级单词)
- monotonous [mə´nɔtənəs] a.单(音)调的 (英语四级单词)
- unreasonable [ʌn´ri:zənəbl] a.不合理的；荒唐的 (英语四级单词)
- severity [si´veriti] n.严厉；严重；苛刻 (英语四级单词)
- envious [´enviəs] a.妒忌的，羡慕的 (英语四级单词)
- arbitrary [´ɑ:bitrəri] a.任意的；专断的 (英语四级单词)
- ardent [´ɑ:dənt] a.热心的；热情洋溢的 (英语四级单词)
- luminous [´lu:minəs] a.发光的；明晰的 (英语四级单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- towering [´tauəriŋ] a.高耸的；强烈的 (英语四级单词)
- warning [´wɔ:niŋ] n.警告；前兆 a.预告的 (英语四级单词)
- silvery [´silvəri] a.银一般的 (英语四级单词)
- seaward [´si:wəd] a.&ad.朝海(的) (英语六级单词)
- middle-aged [´midl´eidʒid] a.中年的 (英语六级单词)
- gloomily [´glu:mili] adv.忧郁的 (英语六级单词)
- contracted [kən´træktid] a.收缩了的；缩略的 (英语六级单词)
- zenith [´ziniθ] n.天顶，顶点；全盛 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- oblique [ə´bli:k] a.歪斜的 vi.倾斜 (英语六级单词)
- languid [´læŋgwid] a.精神不振的 (英语六级单词)
- monotony [mə´nɔtəni] n.单音；单调 (英语六级单词)
- calling [´kɔ:liŋ] n.点名；职业；欲望 (英语六级单词)
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